About

Lefferts

2015 Summer Reading Program

Join the action this summer and have a blast at the Summer Reading Program at Queens Library. This summer celebrate real-life and fictional heroes, cool books, popular fantasy and graphic novels to the latest in your favorite series.

Thank Your Elected Officials With #YouInvested!

Mayor de Blasio, Speaker Mark-Viverito, Finance Chair Ferreras, Majority Leader Van Bramer, outgoing Libraries Subcommittee Chair Constantinides, incoming Libraries Subcommittee Chair King and the New York City Council have made an historic investment in our city’s libraries.

Rockaways Summer of Health

Rockaways Summer of Health is a series of programs and events designed to educate and get the Rockaways fit and healthy. Participate in a variety of classes and workshops for a healthy lifestyle such as stress reduction, nutrition and exercise classes.

Alicia Olatuja, Soul and R&B Concert

Alicia Olatuja sings with a strong, lustrous tone, and mixes elements of classical, jazz, gospel, and pop into her fluid vocalism. She has played alongside giants like Chaka Khan, Christian McBride, and Bebe Winans.

Submit Your eBook to Library Journal's eBook Awards Contest

The Library Journal will honor the best self-published ebooks in the following genres: Romance, Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy. There will be a winner in each genre and each winner will receive $1,000.00 USD from Library Journal.

History

Lefferts is in the South Richmond Hill area of Queens where the first settlers were the Rockaway Indians. Its modern history can be traced back to 1869 when Mr. Albon Man, a New York Lawyer, purchased the Lefferts farm. He then bought Welling Farm from the Indians for a bag of shells. He continued to buy the adjacent area and called his whole land Richmond Hill. With Edward Richmond and other assistants’ help, Mr. Man and his son Alrick built streets and lined them with Elm and Cedar trees. The main avenue was later named Lefferts Boulevard.

Today the Lefferts community is composed of mostly Guyanese and Asian Indians, African Americans, Hispanics, and other ethnic groups.

Lefferts Community Library, actually named the Lefferts Reference Center, opened to the public on September 3, 1975. Since then, in the Richmond Hill area, the Lefferts Reference Center has been providing service as the regional branch for its immediate community and a higher level of reference and resource service between the local branch and Central library.

On May 31, 1978, the Lefferts Reference Center initiated the computerized library circulation system, the first of its kind in New York City. The computerized system checked out the books, now with attaching barcodes, to the customers’ library cards. This technology greatly helped the library staff to issue items and accept returns, and offered the customers information about the items, fines, and other information on their cards.

In 2003, The Lefferts Reference Center again pioneered the use of new circulation technology. That spring, when the branch was renovated, new self check machines were installed. Customers can now check out books, music CDs, videotapes, and DVDs by using the machines themselves, which changed the function of the Circulation desk into the Customer Service desk.